Sat. 5.07: Mail out beret in SASE. Leave message to say I just
mailed it. Guy calls back to thank me for the call. Says Willa will
certainly call to aknowledge receipt and tell me that she likes the
beret very much.

Tues. 5.10: Buy TORTS and PRE-TRIAL LITIGATION at Columbia
bookstore. Go to Columbia Law Library. I need a pass or pay $55 per
month.

A few days ago, the tall guy in the bodega asked me how my beret
business is going. I told him that somebody killed it. He said
"Hang in there". Then today he asked again. I said that when I
showed my berets for the first time, people loved them, then at the
second interview they treated me badly. I said this happened all
the time and I could only conclude that someone was coming after my
first interview and convinced the store people not to do business
with me. "How else can you explain it?" I asked the tall guy.

He looked embarrassed. Then he said that he owns two beauty
parlors and that he could sell my berets in them. "How much do they
cost?" he asked. I had just sold one for $48 so I said "$48 for
instance." "Wow, that's a lot of money!" "But they are worth it.
I's speaking of the winter and mid-season berets, not the summer
ones like I showed you last year. And I have improved my technique
to make them. I'll have to show you. I'll bring you a few so you
can see them." "Yes but for me, how much would you give me to sell
your berets?" I said that I gave him my price and that he could
easily sell my berets for twice my price. He looked embarrassed
again. "But if I buy ten?" "Well, if you buy twelve, I give you a
discount" I say. "How much?" "I don't know, I have to look at my
price list, I don't have all the figures in mind. But next time
I'll bring you a few hats to show you" I said before leaving the
store.

Once home I realized that it was another trick. If the guy owned
two beauty parlors, what was he doing as a clerk in a bodega all
afternoon? He had only been trying to draw me into another bad trip
and he looked embarrassed because he knew that I knew that somebody
was ruining my business and that was just what he was doing
himself. He was ashamed of what he was doing. He wanted to make me
lower my prices as if I were desperate to sell but I had stood
firm, not wanting to sell cheap what I believe are beautiful and
excellent berets.

All I need is selling to the right store, but as long as "they"
are destroying my work, I don't see why I should even try and
compromise the best contacts. The problem with my family has to be
dealt with first. But how? A lawsuit for conspiracy against my
mother, my six siblings, the Slavits, the TA lawyers, the police
detective?

Wed. 5.11: Go to Research Library, just the place in front of
which I had my "accident". I inquire about the Law section. A
librarian shows me the section. It is ridiculous. There are hardly
one hundred books, most of which are related to a very narrow
field, like the bankruptcy decisions. There is an old woman all
dressed in pink including her shoes, who pores over one of these
books. The librarian uses the computerized catalogue. I ask him to
call Legal Ethics" and the result is "The book you requested should
be here" but it is not. Then the librarian says he cannot stay with
me too long and I keep trying with the computer and every time I
get the same answer. "The book you requested should be here",
meaning if we had it, but we don't. What baffles me is that the
line appears between to items totally unrelated to the field,
because everything is in alphabetical order.

I go to the place where I can obtain a pass to a Law Library.
The woman asks what I want. I say the Penal Code. She taps it on
her computer. For Penal Code, it appears that the Penal Code of all
the countries in the world are available somewhere. I see
California, India, Malaysia. I exclaim that I don't give a damn
about the penal code in all those places. "But you didn't specify!"
the librarian tells me. She suffers from librarian stupidity.
Librarians are so accustomed to satisfy the most outlandish
requests that when you ask them for something simple they can't
figure it out.

Maybe she could have asked, and I would have told her what I
thought went without saying, that I was interested in the current
Penal Code of New York State. We'll have to go through all the
screens before reaching New York State, and we find it is located
at the Fordham University Library. It was such an ordeal that I
don't ask about the other subjects I'm interested in. She writes me
a pass so I can go to Fordham University Law Library. I look at it
after I have left her and see that I can only look at New York
State Penal Code in the Fordham library. I am pissed off. This
gigantic library that receives donation from prominent families is
a sham if it doesn't have the basic laws written black on white
available to the public. All these billions, all this architecture,
this solemnity, this reverence for knowledge, these treasures and
not a fucking law book of any use for people to check their rights.
New York, give me a break!

Around 5pm I go to the bodega get some beer, wearing proudly my
usual beret, the one I call "camouflage de luxe" because it's made
of olive green wool with luxurious embroidery, with a wine silk
lining. I don't make any comment to the tall guy regarding our
conversation of the day before.

Thurs. 5.12: I want to call Columbia Law Library and decide to
use the CPW pay phone. I see Anibal is on the sidewalk, talking
with Gabriel, the owner of the club below my room. For a few weeks
now, Anibal has been calling "Miguel" just outside my window and I
have decided to obtain from Anibal that he speak about his wrist
injury. But I cannot ask him point blank about it. I need to
establish a friendly basis and exchange innocuous talk before I get
him there. So when I reach him on the sidewalk I ask, smiling "How
is Miguel?" He starts to explain who Miguel is and I tell Anibal
that I don't know who it is but that I hear him call Miguel outside
my window. He asks if that bothers me and I say no, not at all and
I laugh and go away. He says "Bye bye sweetheart". He used to call
me "legs" from the day he came to me while I was waiting for a bus
to take me to physical therapy, shortly after I returned home from
the hospital in may 90, and started to talk to me about a wrist
injury he had sustained and which had required surgery and
hardware. Then one day last summer several days after I had asked
him if he would consider marrying me for my papers and we never
talked about it again, he had called me "Bridge". I had asked him
how he knew that name, that I had never given it to him. The only
people I had given that name were children, to make it easy for
them to call me.

At Columbia I complain about the restrictions and the guy makes
it clear that the only way for me to get to Columbia law library is
to get a last resort pass, that is after I have exhausted all the
other means available (going to Queens and New Jersey) if I haven't
found what I'm looking for. He explains that Columbia is a private
institution. Oh! That's the reason! Otherwise I would have to pay
the $55 a month fee. But since I have never done any legal research
I might waste a lot of time in the library. But since it is so
close to where I live, maybe an intensive research conducted over
a short period of time would be worth the expense.

I call the Research Library at the number the librarian wrote on
my pass. Ms. Rice is not around and I talk with Ms. Smith. I tell
her I don't understand why I got a pass to Fordham for only one
book, since when one does research, one needs to consult a lot of
different books, and one doesn't know in advance all the books one
is going to need. She says "Dont' say that to me, say it to
Fordham, because we follow their guidelines." She gives me the name
and phone number of the Fordham law librarian. She tells me that
there are two law libraries open to the public, one in Queens that
is the CUNY's, and one at Rutgers university in New Jersey. Not a
single one in Manhattan! I am angry and try to contain myself. I
ask how come in a democracy people cannot have access to the
knowledge of their rights, of the laws they live under unless they
go through a lawyer? I answer the question myself and say that it
is the lawyer's lobby that prevents public labraries from having
law books. I ask about the freedom of information, what is it worth
if people cannot have access to the knowledge of the law in a
public library. What is the meaning of democracy without law books
available in public libraries? We get disconnected although I don't
hear a click or a dial tone. After waiting a few seconds I hang up
and call back. Ms Smith is taking a break and is not available. I
say I'd like to leave a message. The woman says she cannot take a
complicated message. I say I just want to thank Ms. Smith for her
information, because we got disconnected before I could say thank
you and good bye. So the woman says she'll give her the message.
She asks my name. I say I didn't tell my name to Ms. Smith, but
that we were talking about law books.

I am sure now that she hung up on me. I realize that when people
are confronted with something they have no defense against, they
hang up. An FBI agent did it, an Internal Affairs cop cut the
conversation short after putting me on hold, Sophie did it, and now
this librarian did it.

Next I call Janice Greer, the Fordham law librarian but a
recorded message tells me that she's not available right now. I
return home with the New York Times and the Daily News, and my rent
check in my pocket. Bonarti is here, standing in his office. Joey
is at the desk and Richie is at the door, keeping the gate open. I
have to pass by him to enter the office. While I fish for my check
in my pocket, Richie who is behind me grabs the News from my arm.
I turn around abruptly and snatch it away from him, telling him to
mind his own business. At the same time Joey asks me "How are you,
Bridge?" I never told him he could call me that. He learnt that
name from the neighborhood. While I handed out my check to Bonarti
and he handed me out the Law Journal, Richie andswered the
question. Maybe Joey had said "Richie" and not "Bridge" as I had
heard, unless Richie had heard wrong. Anyway Richie said he didn't
know about everybody, but he was doing fine. I refrained from
exploding and opened the door to the wing.

Fri. 5.13: It's Friday the Thirteenth. I'll stay indoors today.
Not a big change because for me, every day (I go out to take care
of myself) it's Friday the Thirteenth and not Valentine's day.

Garbage Glenn brings my Law Journal to my door and riffles
through the mail although he certainly knows that I have nothing
else. While riffling he complains about his leg and a pain that
started low and spread up to his hip. He said he was going to go to
the doctor. I said that pain, whether a tooth ache or a leg pain,
was a warning sign that you should do something. He develops the
subject, talks slowly and gets on my nerves. However I need to
pretend that I am friendly and amenable so I endure it while he
goes on and on about the pain in his leg, how he can't bend it at
the knee.

Just like my siblings with their letter where they refer to a
potential deadly car accident as an excuse to cut me out of the
estate, Garbage Glenn makes a reference to my leg injury while
pretending not to know or not to remember. I believe now that what
I interpreted first as a covert death threat was in fact just a
clumsy denial against the accusation I had not yet formulated, but
of which they had heard through the grapevine. Shortly after I
realized that my family had a motive to kill me and absolutely no
moral constraints since they threatened me, lied to me and had
extorted and kept trying to extort my signature, I had called the
police in Evreux from my home phone to say that I had been the
victim of an attempted murder.

I understand that Pat Myers, the ADA who prosecuted the purse
snatcher had been paid off to dissimulate the existence of the
accomplice who drove the car, because when she interviewed me she
totally suppressed the episode of the pursuit from 96th to 135th
street on the West Side Highway .

Now I understand that the painful feeling I had whenenver I
thought about it was caused by the fact that my heroic deed had
been kept unknown to the justice system. After all, it was not
everyday that such things happened, that a purse-snatching incident
developed into an adventure where the victim, instead of being
planted on the sidewalk with her hands in her mouth and her purse
going away, starts runs across the street after the robber, and
finds an empty cab on Amsterdam avenue just seconds after the
robber takes off in a getaway car. What saved her was her primary
reaction of refusing to be victimized. She ran after the robber
across 96th street towards the intersection with Amsterdam ave. not
knowing what else she could do and her act of blind faith was
rewarded by the empty cab reaching the intersection. If she had not
ran after the purse snatcher, she would have missed it. But she ran
after him, drunk from a good-bye party at Hanratty's in the honor
of Toos ("Adios Toos" cake) where she had drunk three drinks for
free. Toos was leaving the East Coast to marry the beautiful
brother of Pacho's girlfriend. Toos was from the Netherlands and
was blond with blue eyes but not what I would call very pretty. It
was something with her mouth. But she befriended Pacho's
girlfriend's brother who was into the movies I believe in Los
Angeles.

And then after three drinks I left to go home and this blond guy
appeared about 30 feet from me from between parked cars amnd walked
toards me.

The ultimate authority that you could count on when you were
victimized, justice was turning sour on me. Not to mention the way
my small claims court suit against the locksmith had turned out.
"Anyway you didn't tell us how many windows you have and on which
floor you live" nd that was the reason why the judge said I had no
case, noclaim, and advised me to settle out of court for half the
amount in dispute.

All this frustrated some very fundamental assumptions about
justice and caused intense mental and psychological turmoil. This
feeling that overwhelmed me prevented me from looking at the
situation from a dispassionate point of view. It was only when the
purse-stealing incident of dec. 93 in the coffee shop, staged by my
brother, brought to mind the purse snatching of 86 that I thought
again about it, and seeing the discomfort of my brother when I
mentioned it, I understood that he was somehow tied to it. Then
that was the reason why there was no mention of the car driver in
the court proceedings, and why Eddie Santos had been convicted only
of attempted robbery although if he didn't succeed, it was only
because I had taken my purse back after a car chase.

Then I realized that the pain I felt about the purse snatching
and the pain I felt about the accident had the same cause: some
high legal authority had betrayed me and induced me to hide the
truth from the justice system. And why did they do this?

Now I understand that if the truth had to be hushed, there must
be some very important reasons. A common thief would not go to the
extent of bribing Pat Myers, the A.D.A. prosecutor, to hide the
existence of a getaway car driver who had been apprehended by the
police. A negligent bus driver would not go to the extent of paying
off the accident victim's attorney to suborn perjury from her if he
had been truly negligent.

Thur. 5.19: What has been dawning on me lately since I talked to
Veronique is that I can measure my family's hatred towards me by
the extent of their lies. While she lied to me through her teeth
during our overseas conversation about such tremendously important
matters as our father's estate, I could feel the hatred escaping
from her mouth like a noxious fume that rode on the back of her
words and poured from my ear-piece through my ear into my emotions
and poisoned them, making them writhe in pain. There is no way you
can legitimize deliberately misleading someone you pretend to love,
when you know that you do it to cover-up your own shit. The fact
that what Veronique said to me hurt my feelings was only a
secondary benefit. Of course they benefited from hurting my
feelings and said things to deliberately put me down (people
working from home like the Turk tenants) but what really drives
them is the need to cover-up, to avoid detection because they know
that their intentions are unlawful, corrupt and indefensible.

So they victimize me eternally because their need to harm me to
cover up the guilt they feel about a previous misdeed against me
feed on each other like a snake choking on its tail. They try to
convince their deep sense of ethics that all the harm they have
done to me in the long past was for a greater good, and in an
attempt to prove it they do something even worse to me when in fact
they are only confirming the destructive nature of their feelings
towards me.

There is maybe O.1 percent of them that they can't fool and they
think that just because it's not obvious to the people outside the
family that they are totally corrupt (because the family knows it
already), it's not worth having this part of them in agreement with
what they do. Yet this tiny spot is where the tree of guilt grows
from, and they can't control the growth of that tree. It leads them
to an escalation of violence that they have convened to direct
against me long ago. Maybe that's the secret I knew they had and
never let me on in. From anybody's point of view except the
victim's it is obvious that conspirators wouldn't inform their
intended victim of their intent, but when the victim doesn't know
that the people the closest to her, her own parents and siblings,
doesn't know that they have designated her as a scapegoat, how is
she to reason that if they keep her out of their secret, it's
because they intend to harm her?

So I was able to connect the emotional pain I felt hearing my
little sister lie to me to the pain I felt when I was a child and
my parents and older sisters lied to me. I was able to see myself
as a little kid with my parents lying to me on matters that were
important to me, and knowing that their answer was a lie and I knew
it but I didn't dare to tell them I thought they were lying and
acting under the pretense that I believed them and following their
advice, and feeling that they wouldn't lie to me if they loved me,
and feeling their hatred through their lie and becoming afraid of
them though I loved them. I couldn't fathom the depth of
psychological disturbance that would make anybody do this so I had
to integrate hatred with love because my parents were the only
people I knew and I depended entirely on them for my survival. I
couldn't afford to disagree and they had lied to me from the
beginning.

I shall never forget my mother saying that she "had raised seven
children" but it sounded that the children were cattle. It was like
the quantity of children that she had raised was a proof of her
good character. She said this to people from whom she expected a
mission of trust. Several times I had wanted to add "Et faut voir
comme!" (But you have to see how she raised them) but I had
remained silent instead, when I was one of those children she had
raised. She was showing the edge that she had over me because she
had a lot of children and not me.

And now I understood that it had been the way she saw her
children in the first place. Children as cattle. She had raised
children because children were more profitable than mink or pork.
You didn't get goverment money for three heads of cattle but with
children you did, and the percentages increased according to
certain scales. She had pocketed the government allowances to
mothers of large families instead of spending it on her children.
And she had deprived her children of some essentials to save more
money. And she was with love like she was with money. I am sure
that she had the number of children that would allow the greatest
government allowance, and if she had my brother Norbert when I was
eighteen it was not to deprive me of her attention at this crucial
point of my life as I had thought at some point, but because when
I reached majority within three years she would lose some
government allowance because only Veronique and Francois would be
left as minors in the household.

Only under this light did it made sense that she would deprive
me of my human rights and it explained why my wanting to exercise
them offended her. She really wanted to convince me that I wasn't
worth much the better to exploit me. She tried to convince me that
I had less rights than other human beings and paid people to
mistreat me in all aspects of my life to make me believe that
nobody could love me and that what was wrong was with me and not
with them. For her I had never been anything other than a source of
revenue and if I asserted my human rights it threw her plans askew.
Now she's in a pickle. She knows that I know that she tried to kill
me for my inheritance.

As I walked around 10am on 105th street towards Columbus, a
black cat came out straight at me from under a car and gave a sweet
meow. I recognized this small voice and I recognized the cat. At
least it looked exactly like the cat that belongs to the bodega
owner next door. The cat was very friendly and I started to caress
his head, saying "But I know you, I know you, what are you doing
around here?" meanwhile he was purring and I picked him up and he
was still very friendly. I wondered what he was doing there I
started to walk towards home and he leapt down. And it's only at
the end of the day that I realize that, although I went out for
only a few minutes, something happened on Friday the thirteenth: a
black cat.